


Swords for the Land

by intoholybattle



Category: Final Fantasy XIV
Genre: Angst and Tragedy, Gen, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, M/M, Original Character(s), Spoilers
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-24
Updated: 2019-01-01
Packaged: 2019-06-15 08:03:36
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 7
Words: 13,585
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15408597
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/intoholybattle/pseuds/intoholybattle
Summary: The Warrior of Light fell upon a candle guttering in the Brume, and every night the smoke swirled in her dreams. Who was Fray? To what end did she hone her sword, if the battles were lost before she drew it? Though the story cannot be rewritten, she can continue it. Will it be enough to soothe the mourners who remain?





	1. Burial, Balma, and Waoud

**Author's Note:**

> Spoilers: All of Heavensward, DRK through 60 and ALC quests through 70, though I tried to include enough to sum up the quests for those who haven't leveled it. Waoud's character and methods in this tale required some invention, but his history is canonical.

Alphinaud had called her via linkpearl mere minutes after the funeral drew to an end. The handful of pallbearers drawn from Whitebrim's soldiery had yet to fully disperse, and their snow-flecked faces were uneasy.

"I have been thinking a great deal about Estinien and Ysayle," said he, his voice low, and its feeble timbre was not from distance.

"You've reached me at a bad time," she replied.

The truth was, she hadn't been thinking about Estinien or Ysayle at all. Ysayle supposed she could solve Ishgard's problems with peace, and the storied Warrior of Light knew well enough what peace had done for justice in Ul'dah. Estinien was a useful villain, a pit peiste. He would avenge himself of his parents' murderer, but his quest for justice would end there. She knew a better way.

There was silence for a moment while Alphinaud collected himself. He was unaccustomed to being denied anything by her. "I certainly did not mean to disturb you. I apologize. What has happened?"

"It is my own affair," she said.

"My friend," he began, "I have need of your ear."

Always his need. The boy wanted for a mother, not a champion. Not a bell ago Drillemont's discreet personal secretary had asked her if she would not, after all, like to see the man's face, bloodied though it was, and she had turned him down. Her darkness had taken the man's flesh for its own, for gods' sake. She feared that she would look and find the knowing golden eyes staring back at her.

The still-simmering dark begged her to lash out at Alphinaud, but the better part of her cautioned against burdening a young boy with the woes of a beast. She fell silent and let him speak. Like always.

"There is a matter in Mor Dhona on which I would ask your counsel..."

The last and burliest of the pallbearers remained at the grave side, watching her with eyes narrowed against the glare of the snow. Ice piled in the links of his chain mail. He had done this many times before. She took up a shovel and the two of them went to work while Alphinaud took his customary time arriving at his point. At least he'd dropped the subject of the damned dead Elezen.

"I'm given to understand you were involved in the trial of an alchemist named Waoud."

A Near-Eastern lunatic bent on cloning himself at any cost, arrested, tried and found guilty by the Adventurer's Guild not a moon ago. Yes, she was involved. Since he'd succeeded in planting his old soul in a young cloned body, she supposed he'd come out well enough; he'd live for another fifty years in gaol. More than he deserved. "What of him?"

"He has vanished."

She cast a shovelful of hard earth down onto the coffin, which was rapidly disappearing beneath the snow and soil. Her hands itched.

"An investigator of the Guild mentioned your name, and I thought with your help the man might be brought to justice once more."

The words came out in a snarl. "Justice would have been served if the Guild had done away with him as I suggested."

"I should think they will do so this time," said Alphinaud, in a conciliatory tone. "Is everything quite all right? You have been gone for some time, and while I do not wish to drive you, I fear what will transpire should we leave the Archbishop and his men to have the run of Azys Lla—"

"Make up your bloody mind what you'd have me do," she said. "Play inspector or play hero. I've not the time for both."

"My only wish was to—I thought another task, like of old, might..." He sighed, giving up at last his attempts at diplomacy. It was progress; he'd not been capable of honesty before. "I am trying to bring you back to us."

If he only knew how close she had been to abandoning them all! As ever, Ishgard had to interfere. It was not enough that she was Eorzea's Godslayer—now she must become their Kingslayer. For a moment she felt inclined to become an Archon-slayer, but who would be served by it? She thrust her spade into the frozen ground. It would not give her relief. What could?

All hesitation had vanished from his voice when Alphinaud said, "We must act, and soon."

Oh, she would have gone with Fray. To Thavnair, perhaps, or the south seas. But Fray was a mirage. She had spoken to no one. Her hatred for her lot—for the battles, for the burials, for "we must" when what they meant was "you must"—these thoughts alone had driven her into the brush. Now it was time to gain the road again, plucking from her sleeves the thorns and ivy.

A biting wind tore across the gorge west of Whitebrim, racing northward from Snowcloak, whistling and moaning. It froze the tears against her cheeks, and she buried him, and buried her last hopes for freedom. And the soulstone howled.

*

She did not tell the Guild of it, nor the Braves. She did not tell Alphinaud.  
  
She first learned of Waoud's whereabouts through the reconnaissance of her retainer: Balmafula, a Coerthan fisher-woman, formerly of the Dutiful Sisters, twenty-three, free-spirited, fresh-faced, and of a remarkably salacious temperament. She spent her free moments ferrying men between the shores of Vylbrand and Dravania. Balma asked no questions of anyone, and it was for precisely that reason that men often whispered their lives' stories entire, in pitiful and excruciating detail, into her bare bosom beneath Menphina's pale and shining caress.  
  
"Now here's a fine cove," Balma began, as the Warrior of Light dropped the venture into her hand for her next task. "Hannish, like, and lookin' as if he'd not a friend in all the world. Pretty, but beaten-down, ye ken? Tells me the Guild in Mor Dhona had him for millin' coves as he'd been doin' medicine for. That sound right to you?"  
  
"Hardly."  
  
"Aye, so's I said." She slipped the silver coins away with the dexterity of a card shark, sparing them nary a glance. She was fully committed to her narrative. "Not that I care a whit. But on he goes. He says, twas experimental, I'll grant, but work that must be done for the good of all. Some must die for others to live—all this rot about preservin' the wisdom of the ages—the lost Allagan water of life or some other hairy bollocks. Llymlaen's cunt, twas a rook caught up in his own tales if ever I've met one."  
  
She let Balma go on a bit, hearing none of the specifics. She was thinking about Alphinaud and his "task". About alchemy, and the Guild's escaped prisoner. "Did he tell you his name?" she asked.  
  
Balma's mouth hung open at the interruption. The Warrior of Light rarely said anything about her stories, though sometimes it was impossible not to laugh at them. Balma's eyes darted back and forth, as if she suspected a trap. Then she grinned. "Off to the meat market, are ye, Mistress? M'I not example enough of the pitfalls of chasin' menfolk and their wee dandy Topmasts?"  
  
"Gods' sake, Balma," she said.  
  
"He was young for a doctor, right enough. Had a fine arse. But I can recommend a dozen better cuts of flesh than his."  
  
"He's not a doctor. He's an alchemist. One with whom I have some business."  
  
"Ohh, so it's a professional interest, then." She straightened her back and pulled the goggles of gathering back down over her blue-green eyes, but they did nothing to conceal her lascivious smile. "Twas Waoud, he said, and begged me never to tell a living soul. I left him at the mouth of the Whilom upon the coast of southern Coerthas. Happy hunting to ye, Mistress."

*

Tailfeather was not the dour autumn hamlet she had found it those moons ago. The gates were wreathed in thick trailing cardinal vines attended by brown spotted butterflies the size of her palm. Great ferns tumbled over the stones of the Whilom into her warm tawny waters. The air was heavy with pollen and the fragrance of flowers and the faint song of chocobo chicks.

The beauty and newness of it exhausted her. Moreover, there were crowds—not just of hunters, but of Vath traders and laborers, and men from the Convictory. The Nonmind's own rural imitation of the Adventurer's Guild had been for her a charming diversion; its economic repercussions exceeded all expectations. None there were idle enough to take note of her. She pretended to assess the fitness of a pack of chocobos being displayed for the benefit of a nearby Convictor knight, and listened to the voices of the throng. The Echo delivered to her the secret fears of man and beastman alike; her ears delivered to her the news that, at last, Tailfeather had a doctor.

She came back that night in a tattered black cowl and picked through the shadows at the edge of town. It was there that she found Waoud—lodging at the far south end of the village, in a tidy cabin with windows still alight. She entered through the front door. He turned from his work at potions without any sign of alarm, evidently well at ease in his new role and accustomed to late callers.

"Good. I needn't wake you," she said, and a pall of horror fell across his face.

"No," Waoud muttered, scattering the notes strewn across his desk with shaking hands. He sprung from his chair. "No, no."

She caught him roughly by the arm. At first, the idea had seemed tepid to her indeed. A dead end, more something to occupy herself with for a time than a real solution. But the vitality in his face quickened her. The body he'd left behind had been on the verge of death. How perfectly healthy he was, now!

"Please," he said. "Please. I'm done with it."

"No," she corrected him, angling him towards the corner.

"I got what I wanted. Just to live. That was all!" He struggled, but something stopped him as he reached for her hand, to grasp it and push it away. "I only wanted to live. To practice my art a little longer—"

"Your speech has certainly improved," she said.

"Have mercy."

"You're going to do something for me." Waoud shook his head, but she pressed on. "You're going to make a new life for someone else—someone more deserving than yourself. And I'm going to stay right by your side until it's finished. To make certain that you do it well."

"I refuse—"

"Shall I tell my good friend Marcechamp about the two of us? A thrilling tale, our meeting." Waoud's success was incredible—the mark of a genius, even. But to reach his ultimate end, he had sent to their graves a full fifteen Mor Dhonan souls. More gruesome still, he'd cut the tongues of their clones to ensure their silence. It was only with the cooperation of the similarly mad Severian of the Ul'dahn alchemists that he had been proven guilty. "You nearly had the better of Wiltwaek and the Guild, hadn't you? Regrettable, the byproducts of your research."

"You had me locked away! Aetherial signatures—spectrolium!" he shouted. "Which hell did that fraud Severian call you up from, harlot?"

She thrust him against the wall, and a handful of apothecary bottles tumbled from their low shelf over his head and to the floor. It had been gratifying, for a time, to harry this cowardly white-bellied fish of a man. Now she was angry. "Am I not direct enough, ser? All your life's work—two lives' work, with your Allagan mysteries... A very simple tool have I, to see the lot undone." And she drew the shining claymore from her back and showed him the length of it.

Now sweat glistened on his clear, high brow in the lamplight. Stammers without meaning issued from his lips. At last, he said, "What do you want of me?"

"A life, for a man whose life was stolen."

"Ask Severian," he insisted. "Ask him! The fool. The maniac! I can't. It's beyond my power."

They called her a bringer of miracles. She supposed she could deliver one more.

"Then how fortunate you are," she said, "to have my aid."


	2. The Rubicon

The Whitebrim guard had slackened since Nidhogg's demise, but she chose a foggy midnight for the task to ensure they passed unnoticed. It would take hours to exhume Fray on her own.  
  
Spring had not touched the vast and craggy tracts of central Coerthas. The snow was thick beneath their feet, and as they neared the grave site, she could hear Waoud's labored breathing behind her. She did not worry that he might flee. In his heart, he wished to see whether it could be done.  
  
She shoveled away the snow from the ground when they arrived until she found the short unmarked gravestone that she'd left upon his feet. Peering at the patch of sunken earth before her, Waoud asked, "How far down?"  
  
"Five fulms," said she, driving spade into earth. The soldiery had given up after that, finding the ground too hard to dig beyond.  
  
"You'd better hurry if you wish to finish the deed by morning," he said, and looked hunted. He knew Ishgard would not be so kind to his ilk as the Adventurer's Guild had been.  
  
She drank the strength potion she'd prepared for the evening, and began her work. Waoud watched as she made her way down, the quick puffs of his nervous breath melting into the fog. She found much time to reflect. Once, she had believed with total surety in her aegis as a knight of the Sultana. It had borne Titan's fury, Ifrit's flame, Garuda's biting plumes. It had thrust aside the fangs of the Black Wolf himself. Her allies stood behind her without fear, pouring into the battle all their vigor, to the last drop. To protect had been the fulfillment of all her aspirations.  
  
Then Moenbryda fell.  
  
How the others moved on with such speed she did not know. Only Urianger seemed to bear the marks of the same lingering grief; ofttimes he would speak to her at length without giving her a single glance, then touch some subject too close to Moen's purview and lock eyes with the Warrior of Light as he fell into bereft and eerie silence.  
  
When Wilred followed Moenbryda in haste, she began to sense that she had lost her grip. When she witnessed as Haurchefant's punctured shield was lain against his gravestone, she knew it. Thence was the way of the Paladin shown for the farce it was.  
  
She entrusted Curtana and the Holy Shield to Balmafula and never once looked on them again. Alphinaud began to grow impatient while she sought some other way in which to fight. She wondered if she would ever taste victory again.  
  
That was when she met Fray.  
  
Her shovel struck wood. She reached into the loosened soil and searched for the edge of the coffin lid; a ghoulish creaking issued from the hinges as she pulled it open.  
  
"Quickly!" said Waoud, from the lip of the grave.  
  
She had declined to see his face before. Now it was her responsibility. She tried to turn his neck to gain freer access to the gorget at his throat and found it rigid and immobile. Of course. Blindly, she dug her hands down to the barbut's adamantite hinges. Off with the circlet and the turban, until all that remained was the metal and the dead man's closed eyes beneath. Her arms were afire with the work of digging, and only the lingering effects of the strength potion permitted her to drag the helmet over his head.  
  
She held onto the barbut for a long time.  
  
"What are you doing?" Waoud demanded.  
  
There was no denying death had touched him, but she could see, through the livor, how handsome he might have been in life. His hair black and carefully oiled and combed back, shaven at the sides; his skin dark, like hers, and darker still about the eyes from the soot he smeared across them to hide his flesh. To hide any flicker of humanity from his foe.  
  
She steeled herself. Her shaking hands. Their object was the heart. Waoud required blood, and he had explained to her, with an alchemist's clinical exactitude, the fate of a man's blood upon his demise. He told her of its pooling and congelation, about the breakdown of bodily tissues. They would break open the chest and search the jellied masses that lay within, hoping that enough blood could be recovered from them to press onward with Waoud's scheme.  
  
She set the helmet aside. Astride Fray, she set about removing the layers of armor from his upper body—the thick griffin leather of the coat, the adamantite breastplate, the chain shirt beneath. It had plainly been some artisan's life's work, this suit of armor. The blood pounded in her head. She was soaked through with sweat from exertion, but a chill wracked her body. It would have been a fine surprise to return this armor to him when he lived once more, but the smell of rot permeated every stitch. It was unsalvageable.  
  
Her eyes began to well. Whether from the stench, the stress, or her own desperation, her distraction was so great that she did not even notice Waoud clambering down into the grave until he was right beside her. She feared for a moment that he might strike her, exacting his revenge, and leave her there to share in sleep with the man whose name she'd stolen.  
  
But he had taken up her cause for his own. "Away," he said, not without sympathy, and rolled up the light linen sleeves of his tunic. "I will take it out myself."  
  
"You rightly said this part was my endeavor."  
  
"If the task is yours, it shan't be done. You knew him too well."  
  
"I knew him not at all," said she, retreating to the foot of the grave to rest her back against its earthen wall.  
  
Waoud pulled from the large sack at his side an improvised autopsy kit: a butcher's saw, armorer's pliers, a chisel and hammer of unknown provenance, a barber's delicate scissors, and a hideous pair of rib shears with a curve like that of a condor's beak. Not half a bell had passed but he had lain open Fray's chest and held the cold denatured organ in his hands.  
  
"This malodorous lump is not a man." He slid the shining black mass into an urn and stoppered it, then vigorously scrubbed his hands and the vessel itself with an alchemically treated cloth. Its peculiar odor stung her nostrils, but anything was better than the scent of death that poured heavy and thick from the coffin. When he was finished, Waoud flung the cloth aside, and continued, "It is for this reason that we have some small hope of success. The flesh and the will are joined for a time. But though the flesh might fail, the will endures, elsewhere. Do you understand?"  
  
The Padjali pulled Y'shtola back from the Lifestream. Thancred simply escaped it. She understood.  
  
"We have need of a lodestone," said Waoud. He rose. "A beacon, to guide the man to his new flesh."  
  
"That was settled long ago," said she. The soulstone was warm against her breast.  
  
*  
  
Asking favors did not come easily to her, less so when they required her to petition Matoya. The Warrior of Light could rely on finding friends wherever she went—friends, and debtors. Matoya owed her nothing. Nor was there anything with which her favor might be bought. Not even the act of arriving with Y'shtola in tow had softened the old hag, and Y'shtola would surely have been dead without the intervention of Hydaelyn's champion. Threats, too, would be useless, for Matoya had endured a lifetime of threats, both personal and professional. She would have to take a different tack.  
  
"What do you want from me this time, girl?" Matoya asked. "I don't think I've ever seen you here alone."  
  
"There is one whom I would take to the Aetherial Sea."  
  
The poroggos continued their daily tasks, but with a notable air of distraction. A little one carrying a tower of books lost his balance, and, in a flurry of yellowing pages, found himself buried beneath his own burden. When the tomes had clattered to the floor, Matoya said, "Then run him through. That's your gift, isn't it?  
  
She set her jaw. The loathsome crone. "If that were my meaning, I would never have come to impose upon your legendary hospitality."  
  
Matoya cackled. "You've been taking lessons from Shtola. Why, then? Who is this friend of yours who must so urgently go to look upon the Sea?"  
  
How was she to answer? With his name? With his predicament? Fray was dead; really, the predicament belonged to the living. To herself, Sidurgu, and Rielle. She hesitated only for a moment to consider her response, but Matoya had already drawn the truth from the silence. She turned away, as if the matter were resolved.  
  
"Recall the mood in which your party left this place before. You will find little profit in begging the dead to shoulder your grief."  
  
"Minfilia is not dead."  
  
"A swift riposte. Did you come hoping to barter? I'll make an offer, then. I mislike that soulstone that you have. It has a hungry air," said Matoya. "Why don't you toss that into the Sea? The watery one or the one down this hall, whichever first presents itself."  
  
"If you allow my friend and I passage into the Antitower, I'll never touch it again."  
  
Matoya wandered between her bookshelves, considering the idea. "You're very careful with your words, I know. Will merely keeping your fingers off it suffice to shield you from its influence?"  
  
"If I can be bested by the mere sight of a stone, then Eorzea shall soon want for another Warrior of Light."  
  
"Yes. That's what I'm afraid of," said Matoya.  
  
She took a seat by the table, primarily to keep her temper in check. There was no response that she could give. It was not enough that there was nothing she could pay for Matoya's cooperation; alone of all the world, the old woman saw her for what she really was. There was no hiding behind impressive weapons or great deeds or armor bartered for with priceless Tomes of Lore. Where others saw strength because they desired to make use of it, Matoya saw agony. Weakness.  
  
"Think of what you are fighting for. Have you nothing left to defend? To strive for? Recall that swinging a sword is not an end of itself."  
  
"Well do I know!" she said. She'd not meant to raise her voice, but something in it had betrayed her all the same. The poroggos froze. Even the brooms faltered in their incessant sweeping. Why did Matoya insist on it? What did she care for her fallen friends? What were a warrior's failures to Matoya, but a goad? The Warrior of Light had no taste for speaking her heart, not even to those who would've treated it with tenderness. But of all she had to offer, there was just one thing the old witch craved: unguarded flesh, a soft underbelly into which to sink her fangs. Warming her cold fingers by the light of a candle upon the table, she muttered, "I've often thought to cast away my sword of late."  
  
Matoya's dry, sarcastic laughter filled her with a dread she could ill explain. The candle flames wavered in the damp, stale air.  
  
"Then do it. Eorzea is simply overflowing with heroes, after all," said Matoya, and turned to face her at last. The steel in her narrowed eyes could have driven a party of gigas shrieking back to their den. "But take care, Warrior of Light! Take care that, in your desperation to escape the battle—to escape the truth—you do not become the adversary."  
  
"You think me craven, and weak, and a traitor to my cause," she said. "Have you any further venom left to spit?"  
  
Matoya seemed appeased. She was almost smiling when she said, "No, I think that will do. When can I expect the two of you?"  
  
*  
  
It did not improve her disposition to discover what a fine team she and Waoud made. She would ask him to explain some process he planned to use, and he would oblige with a patient lecture, assuming nothing, requiring not a word from her for hours on end. He would register his need for exotic materials, and two turns of the sun later she would return with Allagan catalysts, a water cluster the size of a newborn aldgoat, or an alembic of adamantite and aurum regis.  When he had no need of her assistance she would work in Louisonet's fields for her bread, and everyone seemed pleased that the doctor had such a strong and capable apprentice. It felt very much like Alphinaud's "old times". On windy mornings at sunrise she would greet Oschon's breath where it whistled through the cliffs to the west of the village and remind herself how badly she needed Waoud. It did nothing to relieve the guilt of aiding a known murderer as he further tinkered with the order of the Twelve.  
  
Of Alphinaud, she heard enough at first. He would call via linkpearl and ask after her well-being; she would say nothing. Into the silence he poured his worries, his regrets. She had no hope to offer him. The calls grew short, and in time, Tataru called in his stead. Aymeric wanted her advice. Edmont needed a sympathetic ear. Emmanellain wanted for a better example by which to live his life.  
  
As summer came to Tailfeather, she began to beg.  
  
"Please come back." And, "We need you." And, "I'm afraid."  
  
The next night she waded out onto a sandbar in the Whilom. She cast the linkpearl into the swift, cold southbound current, and watched it vanish. When she returned to the cabin smelling of sweat and river water, Waoud asked her, "What if I told you that, at the last, I require the blood of a living man?"  
  
"I would ask how much," said she.  
  
Waoud's shoulders relaxed. He must have feared this moment. "The lot of it," he said.  
  
They took the empty cavern southeast of the village for their workshop. After midnight she crept through the Hundred Throes where the poachers and exiles gathered and took one of their watchmen to the ground with a heavy river stone. She bound and gagged him and flung him across the back of her chocobo. In Waoud's makeshift lab she strung him up from a thick mossy root that hung from the interior walls, then turned her back and watched the entrance to the cave while Waoud bled the life from their victim as if he were nothing more than livestock. She thought of the poor, stupid Lalafellin brigand Waoud had hired to do his dirty work. The little corpse-hauler who had confessed, then begged for her protection. Nothing set them apart now but her lack of fear. In a way, it showed her meaner still than he.

Waoud wrung the last drops from the watchman's veins. His muffled screams had long since ceased. She held the corpse while Waoud cut it free, blood dashed across his young and charming face. He scrubbed his crimson hands with one of his treated cloths and cast it aside onto the body as if it, too, were nothing more than garbage.  
  
The uniqueness, the irreplaceable quality of a single life meant nothing to the alchemists of Allag. It meant nothing to Waoud, their historian and acolyte. It was in their power to destroy and to create, and so they undertook whichever pleased them. She had planned to kill him when it was done. But what if there were complications?  
  
"We must dispose of the lad, of course," he said, carrying the heavy basin of the poacher's blood to his worktable. Thus had Marcechamp commissioned her himself, as if it were a farm chore; only the ends had differed. She understood. More fodder for the bandersnatches.


	3. The Flesh

No more could she live out her days in Tailfeather as a farmhand. Purpose was upon her. Waoud cultured the homunculus in the cavern, and she guarded it from the sight of wandering hunters at all hours. She tried to keep from looking at it herself, even when Waoud emerged one day with a rare smile upon his face, saying, "Not long, my dear, not long."  
  
Soon after, the news reached Tailfeather that the Archbishop was dead. A hero had made the trek to Azys Lla in the company of the Scions and finished the job she'd given up. The messenger brought tidings that Aymeric de Borel would, for a time, take the reins of Ishgard; he brought the hero's name, too.  
  
She did not know him.  
  
It was the first time anything had stirred her since she had lain in Fray's grave. The Warrior of Light took Hydaelyn's blessing not out of duty, but out of hope—a childish hope that with it she might save the realm. But it had not changed the realm. It had changed her, and full often had those changes frightened her. If she had been a normal woman—or even a just woman with the Echo—Fray might have slept, as men are meant to sleep.  
  
She could not fathom how the Archbishop might've fallen to a normal man. Had Hydaelyn taken this stranger as Her savior? Had She done so out of wisdom, or desperation? She'd feared herself, while she toiled for the Scions in the Crystal's name. She feared this hero, too.

She had half a mind to fly to Falcon's Nest for reconnaissance. But that evening, as she watched the stars turn in the little patch of blue-green sky she could see from the mouth of the cavern, she heard mumbling and whining from Waoud's workroom. At first, she could not decipher it; only the impression of distress was palpable. On they went, through the night, through sunrise, taking sharper form as the bells passed by.  
  
"Ohh, but it is cold," the voice wailed, and she shuddered, and forgot all else.

She summoned Waoud. When she explained what she'd heard, he said, "You really are some sort of ghoul, with those accursed ears of yours. I should have to kill myself if I could hear such things."

She kept to the mouth of the cavern; he hurried inside. "Should I come introduce myself?" she asked.

"You might just as soon introduce yourself to a patch of moss!" he shouted, from deep within.

"You give a poor impression of Thavnairian manners." She risked a glance after him; now there were two shadows in the cavern, not one. The thing had gotten to its feet! For a moment her heart seized, as if strangled by a ghostly fist. Waoud was herding it toward her, with a thick blanket wrapped around its naked body. The shadows pulled away from its face, and her unease melted away. It was an innocent. He was an innocent. And he was the very image of Fray in every aspect save two: his unmarred flesh, and his placid and untroubled brow. All the same, she wished the thing would stop looking at her. "Did you endure your infant stage in your own little hiding spot, when you did this to yourself?"

"You boor. My soul was at the ready! He is empty," Waoud explained. New though he was, no wonder brightened his face, nor did worry cloud his eyes. Only sensation seemed to stir him. He could walk, but his steps were uncertain and reluctant. He seemed to wish for stillness, silence, warmth. "And we must hasten to fill him, before the aether pours into him your Weaver's yield and he becomes a man unto his own. There will be no hope of calling back your comrade into him, should that come to pass—"

The homonculus reached for her and tugged gently at her koppranickel earring, admiring its lustre.

"Curiosity," Waoud said, as if it were something loathesome. "That is your enemy."

Without thinking, she pulled the earring from her ear and offered it to him. Waoud closed her hand and shoved it away.

"What?"

"You threatened me! You demanded this. Very well—but I will not do it twice," he said. "Back to Tailfeather with you, before your _kindness_ ruins everything."  
  
She made ready for the journey to the Hinterlands the next morning. The packs hung light on the amber's back, so that the bird would not be overburdened with herself and the empty man astride him. When Marcechamp stopped to admire the draught chocobo and asked her whither she was bound with so few supplies, she answered, "Away, for a time."  
  
"You're a dab hand at cultivatin' an air of mystery," said he. His eyes tracked the homunculus as she helped him into the saddle. The poor creature had crushed a spring of rue in his hand moments before, wondering at its peculiar scent, and now the flesh was red and stinging. "Might've pulled yourself another fellow from the void, for all I know. And here we lot were thinking you'd set your heart on our good doctor."  
  
"What flattery, to believe me at play upon so many fields."  
  
"You can wed the dullest man alive, so long as you come back," said Marcechamp, with a hint of worry in his voice. "We've all grown quite comfortable having you on hand."  
  
Of course, she thought. How difficult it is to say farewell to our beloved tools. The homunculus looked at Marcechamp with his blank, unappraising eyes, and she bade the chocobo take flight before the man asked further questions.  
  
Flying seemed to overwhelm him; he gripped her sides, apparently in mortal fear. A dust storm blew through Avalonia that morning. As they broke through the last of the dun, biting clouds and into the morning mist of the Hinterlands, he said, "I can see again."  
  
"And how does it seem to you?"  
  
No answer came; he lacked the words. Her doubts loomed. This thoughtless beast was here only for a time, she assured herself. Tonight it would be Fray who looked out upon this land. He would have something to say.  
  
*  
  
The empty man was harmless, and Matoya made no effort to conceal her disappointment. Moments after their arrival she had already begun weaving strings of cleverly and not-so-cleverly couched insults against him. But he could scarcely understand her, learned as she was, and had not the sense to be offended besides.  
  
"I can't imagine what you think this dullard ought to make of Sharlayan research," Matoya said. The veil of suspicion had not left her face for a moment since their coming, but she made to unbar the passage all the same.  
  
"He is not well."  
  
"That I see," she said, curling her lip. The homunculus had fixed his eyes on one of Matoya's brooms; the noise of its sweeping seemed to entrance him. "And you think the most concentrated font of aether in Eorzea will be beneficial to him somehow?"  
  
She nudged the door open. The musty darkness yawned before them.  
  
"The black stone," Matoya said. "I would see it pass from your keeping ere I send you on."  
  
The Warrior of Light lay her claymore by the door side, and pressed the soulstone into the homunculus's hand. How easy it was to let it go! She felt only a little frightened when his fingers closed around it. Only a little. It would be in the hands of its rightful owner soon. Matoya had sold her short indeed; she would never touch the thing again. The Scions had no need of her. The battle lay behind her, in memory.  
  
"How warm it is," he said, and tilted it to catch the light.  
  
The old witch glared at the both of them as they strode within. She had heard him say nothing—as no other had ever heard him speak a word, save Hydaelyn's former champion. He had yet to learn such things as words.  
  
Beyond, as the spires of the Antitower crept into view below, the soulstone, too, spoke to her without words. She wondered if the homunculus could hear it.  
  
The beasts within the tower had been put to rest. Only the hum of its ambient spellery broke the tranquil silence. At length, the homunculus asked, "To bring me here. How come?"  
  
It was the first question he had ever posed to her. She led him onward with a sense of urgency. "You must carry something for me."  
  
"But you are strong. What need have you of me?"  
  
The aether was gathering around them, like the gloom of Mor Dhona. Blue and violet waves shimmering gently in the air. In his hand, the soulstone shone with a crimson light. She felt something being pulled from her, a silken tether pulled across a dull knife's edge. The Echo overtook her.

  
_The Temple Knight's scimitar shot through the unguarded patch of flesh beneath his arm, and he could bear the weight of his own blade no longer. In the instant in which his left arm tried to compensate for the sudden burden upon his right, the enemy tore his sword away and thrust it down between the adamantite plates and into his chest._  
  
_The onlookers howled with delight. Their voices crashed against him. Breakers upon a stormy coast. The Darkness fled him. He was weary. The steel claymore clattered to the ground. The blood pouring from the severed artery was warm._

  
At the foot of the stairway rising into the Antitower, the homunculus would travel inward no more. His eyes were wide; he gaped first at her, then at the soulstone in his shaking palm.  
  
"Let us go back," he begged. "I am afraid."  
  
She leapt toward him, in the grip of a premonition, certain that he would next fling the stone down into the swirling aether, never to be retrieved. But so shaken was she by the Echo and its portents that she dove too soon and took him about the waist, one hand grasping his to close it and keep safe Fray's stolen gem. They tumbled to the diaphanous ground, and he cried out as she overran him, staring wildly into the chasm beneath.


	4. An Echo (Paralysis)

Into the hallways of the Scholasticate shone the last rays of the evening sun, split into a dozen lurid hues by the tall peaked stained glass windows. Through the rainbow pools Fray ran with all speed, his chest heaving, a serpent wound around his lungs. At the portico leading into the grand courtyard he stopped at last, but only because Father Maxencoix snatched his arm with a demon's strength as he passed by and held him fast to the spot.  
  
"Young man," he hissed. The borrowed tome slipped from Fray's arms; he made to reach for it, but the rector pulled him back upright, and the book and its leather binding slapped against the cut stones before his feet. "Have you not learned, after fifteen years, how to comport yourself in Her holy halls?"  
  
He had learned very well. He was, after all, gutter trash, as his highborn peers were so fond of intimating whenever he had the foul luck to enter their presence. Exemplary behavior was one of only two reasons he was tolerated. The second reason was his skill as an armor-smith, and today he felt he could not make another piece for the Temple in good conscience ever again.  
  
"You will answer me, boy," said Maxencoix.  
  
Sweat poured from Fray's brow into his eyes. Over his cheeks. Sweat, not tears. Surely it was not tears. The apology passed his lips with ease. It seemed to be expected of him, that he should constantly apologize for his presence there. It digusted him, but he could not hate his keepers; the hate fell upon his self. Maxencoix eased his grip. Fray reached down to retrieve his night's study, though he no longer had any plans to study. What gains could he make, now? With suspicion and pity both in his old gray eyes, the rector asked, "' _Panoply and Maneouvers of the Early Orthodox Sects_ '? Dry reading to inspire such a temper, Fray. Are you quite alright?"  
  
Fray had wandered to the collegiate library to retrieve material on the first and bloodiest of the Orthodox schisms. Read with a sharp eye for the Temple's typical blithe omission where its own crimes were concerned, it was not gentle reading, and he spent a dark day there producing a preliminary bibliography. By noon he had taken up _Panoply_ to preserve his sanity, ignoring the prolix internecine and strategic portions in favor of the descriptions of olden armaments. It was then that Father Thibaulaux passed him in the stacks on the way to an adjoining room. Fray escaped his notice by dint of the tower of books he'd piled before him during his work.  
  
Thibaulaux had a girl with him. Mariselle was her name, he thought—ten or eleven, a lucky churl plucked from beneath the worm-eaten scaffolding of the Brume, like Fray. As she followed Thibaulaux out of sight, Fray heard him say: "Won't you be a friend to an old man? I shall need you only a bright little while, my dear."  
  
The words split his heart. Revenants loosed from their tomb. Doors, once tightly shut, torn from their hinges and dashed upon barren ground. He sat frozen at the table for nigh on a bell before he found it in himself to flee.  
  
When it had been he who heard those words, he had merely thought it was the price of his admission to be used a while. This was different.  
  
"I am greatly troubled," said Fray. He made his best effort to collect himself, to look as if he ought to be taken seriously rather than waved away as a simpleton. "I would like to speak to the Deputy Headmaster as soon as I might."  
  
"My dear boy!" laughed Maxencoix. "You are too caught up in earthly matters. Here, now. The subject of your reading is long past—you need speak to no-one, but only give your worries unto the Fury in prayer. Let Her lift your burden."  
  
Long past, indeed. It had been many years. He had given up meditating on the old priest and his papery hands. On who was at fault. On whether it was a fair trade. What did the Fury care for his burden? How could he have been so stupid, to think he was the only one Thibaulaux had taken for his toy? There was dark and arid crypt beneath his breast where his heart might have been, and soon Mariselle, too, would welcome Thibaulaux into her garden, knowing not how to refuse him. He had to stop it.  
  
But Deputy Headmaster Bruvagon was unreachable. Each morning Fray went to the galleries before his office, to the courtyard, to the classrooms where he taught postgraduate courses of Halonic philosophy and theodicy to the choruses of rapt men and women—mostly highborn—who would lead the next generation of Ishgardian smallfolk in praise to the Spearmaiden and prostration to Her chosen state. Bruvagon stood beyond knots of feted clergy and crowds of upperclassmen who stared at Fray over their shoulders as if he were a beastman set loose in the city, and he despaired. His studies were forgotten. The quartermistress asked after his well-being—in gentle tones, as was her way, but clearly expecting more visible progress on the suit of armor that was his monthly task. The Temple Knights would have to secure their munitions elsewhere, Fray decided. Yes, he thought it was past time he made an end of his contributions to their cause.  
  
On the eleventh morning, Remifort de Durendaire blocked his advance toward the offices and, towering over him, said, "If you have a matter you'd discuss with Father Bruvagon, you might first consider behaving less like a ravenous croc."  
  
"Didn't know you'd become the Deputy Headmaster's personal gatekeeper," said Fray. He had passed a hollow-eyed Mariselle in the hallways that morning and had said nothing to her. He'd never spoken to anyone about Thibaulaux, and did not know how to begin. Action was his only resort. He could bear no more waiting to resolve the matter. Indeed, he feared it was already too late.  
  
"I am merely looking out for your well-being, you fatherless boor," said Remifort. Fray made to dodge around him and continue on his way, but Remi pressed a large white hand to Fray's chest and pushed him back simply by leaning forward. "You'd understand that, if you had any care for what others think of you. Or any idea how a man of good breeding behaves."  
  
"Congratulations on your promotion, Ser Secretery," Fray said, and held firm his ground.  
  
"What are you so bothered about? If you'd tell me, I could have a word with Father Bruvagon in your stead."  
  
To think on how he would tell Bruvagon of Thibaulaux's crimes made him feel ill. The idea of saying so much as a word about them to anyone else made him want to vomit. "It's something I wish to tell him in confidence," he said.  
  
"Do you not feel that you can confide in your fellow students?"  
  
"To earn others' confidence requires character. Which you lack," he said. "Sorry to be the one to break the news."  
  
"Ah, yes. Of course," Remi said, smiling. "You've always just been _better_   than all of us, haven't you, Fray? Despite being plucked from the rubbish, after your dirty mother died there thrashing in her own filth."  
  
"Don't act so threatened. It's about Father Thibaulaux, not you," he said, and immediately knew he'd said too much.

Remi rose to his full height, eyes flashing. "Father Thibaulaux is among the noblest men in Ishgard, and is without question the most venerable in the Scholasticate. If you had any brains in that horrid little latrine you call a head, you would know without being told that he is beyond reproach."  
  
"He is mistreating the students of your high and kingly school, young Lord Durendaire," said Fray.  
  
"Some people are only good for one thing," said Remi, and Fray realized he knew.  
   
A certain type of behavior was demanded of a lowborn man in the Pillars. Servility, deference, smallness, silence. He had never risen to anger at such taunts; it could be fatal to him, and anyway, the High Houses were to all appearances full of the worst of all creatures sentient life had to offer. They were in no position to judge his character. But something about the apprehension in Mariselle's pale and pretty face asked for steel. None had guarded Fray, nor questioned the wants of the old men at whose mercy he lived and breathed. "Dreadful, isn't it? The caprice of Halone's mercy," he said, tired of swallowing his words. His anger was a boiling black core in his belly, and it made him feel invincible and deranged. "To deliver me from the trash as an infant, yet lift nary a finger to help you from becoming utter refuse in your manhood. To leave you begging alms in Her halls, pretending at goodness. Like every other birdfucking idiot son of your inbred idiot forefathers."  
  
The corner of Remi's mouth twitched. His fist, too, twitched, and he raised it. But he did not strike. He looked as if he had come to a decision. "Father Bruvagon will be in the Hoplon after sundown tonight. Why don't you corner him then?" he said, his voice unsteady with anger, and swooped past Fray toward the offices. "I'm sure he'll be delighted to chat with a nasty, common pisspail like yourself."  
  
*  
  
Fray knew it was his murderer who loomed above him now. The scent of rue flooded his nostrils. He felt that someone was holding his hand, tightly. Though he could think of no one else, he did not call Sidurgu's name.  
  
A tremendous wave of hate, opaque as wine, rushed toward him. He could not flee it. He came to rest, there, at the bottom of the churning tempest. When the waves retreated, Halone stood before him.  
  
He was not in Ishgard any longer. He was not certain where he was—it may have been one of the Heavens, or a strange and silent Hell. He wished to move, but could not even lift his head. Something yet resisted him. His arms felt soft and weak; they were not his own.  
  
"Do you know, Valkyrie," Fray said, "what's done in your name?"  
  
Her eyes swam with confusion. He saw that She was kneeling, not far from him at all. She reached for him. The soulstone was in his hand. It felt swollen, like a fetid wound.  
  
"Fray?" She asked. She did not look like he'd been taught She would. She was brown, like him. Her armor was worn and beaten. She carried no weapon, nor even a shield. "Is it finished? Is it done so swiftly?"  
  
"Not until the last of them's been killed." He managed to pull himself up for only a moment before his strength failed him again. There was a fire in his mind. The bitter tonic of the Darkness. It roiled. Drove him. What of Rielle? What of Sidurgu? He had to find them, to stop short the murder the Temple Knights so surely had in store. "Where is my sword? Where is my armor? Send me forth again, if justice has any meaning left to you."  
  
"Oh, Fray," she said, and began to cry. Her tears cleared his mind. She was not his murderer. She was not Halone. "Forgive me, won't you?"


	5. An Echo (Hypovolemia)

Fray bade farewell to that eleventh sun in the nave of the Cathedral, forsaking his thesis and his hopes of graduation. He carried on his person an article which he had often taken with him during walks in the Brume—a _main-gauche_ , concealed with care within his sleeve. He did not know why he felt so certain that Remifort meant to do him harm, but he was tired of ignoring his instincts, of pressing them down into dank corners with his forced composure. Was the church so fine as to be worth his soul? Was schooling so valuable, when he'd never be more to a man of character in Ishgard than an urchin from the Brume?

His instinct might have saved Mariselle. He had to hope it could still save him. It told him this was a trap, and that his rosewood wand would not be sufficient to protect him if the blue-blooded scoundrel brought friends. Remi would bring friends.  
  
The great statue of the Fury within the Cathedral did not look down upon the supplicant. Its gaze wandered emptily eastward, into a wall. No place for those who hoped for deliverance, he decided.  
  
A thick cloud cover descended upon Ishgard as the sunlight faded. Not even the palest moonbeam could breach its surface, and Fray readied himself for snow. In a moth-eaten—but warm—fur-lined hood, he crept toward the Hoplon through the coming dark and saw the figures of Remifort and two armed retainers in clear relief against the golden spires of the Vault. Deputy Headmaster Bruvagon was nowhere to be found. In a way, this was a relief.  
  
"Evening, Remifort," said Fray.  
  
"Ah, you unlucky bastard," Remi replied. "You just missed him."  
  
The retainers—one Hyuran, one Elezen—drew their blades. He had never fought a man with a sword in his entire life. But the black bile in his stomach purred.  
  
"Only two? You don't think much of me at all," said Fray, as the men advanced.  
  
"Sorry to be the one to break the news," Remi sneered.  
  
Fray's spell of repose hit the Elezen retainer just as he was in striking range. It would last only for a handful of seconds, but that was all he needed. Fray followed him to the ground and drove the _main-gauche_ into his spine.  
  
"More than one man was fooled by your clever hands, Fray," said Remi, looking just a trifle nervous, "but you'll enjoy the comfort of the forge no longer. Drive the blade in deeper, churl, so that I can see you put to death, rather than merely expelled for your insolence!"  
  
"You'll see nothing done to me at all until you can disarm me."  
  
The Hyuran retainer was upon him, swinging his blade. The edge grazed his shoulder, and somehow the pain filled him with more life than he had felt in the whole of his memory. Leaving the wound to bleed, he lunged forward, grasping the man's sword arm, and buried the _main-gauche_ in his belly. It was much more fulfilling, more natural to him, than conjury had ever been. The longsword clattered to the ground.  
  
Remi drew his wand, regarding Fray with horror. Good.  
  
Spells of protection poured from his lips. Fray wondered for a moment if it might not be excessive to kill this misbegotten pantomime of a man—but after all, some people were only good for one thing.

He left Remi bleeding and wailing on the white stones of the Hoplon as the snow began to fall. With the soiled dagger hidden in his coat, and a scarf slung across his wound, the clergy thought nothing of his late return. No more highborn gatekeepers sought to impede him. He secured a meeting with Thibaulaux within the bell.

Fray had never been in the old man's chambers before; he'd always sought some other locale for his crimes. They were charming, really. Tidy. There was a fine window through which the snowflakes could be seen fluttering toward the Pillars like down. A humble desk and bed, the wood well-cared-for. Thibaulaux looked positively delighted to see him. There was no guilt or worry in his eyes, only fondness.  
  
"My dear boy," he said. "What a lovely surprise. What brings you here this evening?"  
  
When he still had hope of audience with Bruvagon, Fray had pictured in his mind a lengthy and damning trial. He had imagined that Thibaulaux would be forced to acknowledge openly the evil he had done. His peers would be disgusted. There might even have been hope for reform in the Scholasticate, to discourage future abuses. It was a satisfying fantasy.  
  
"I've news, Father," said Fray. He came forward and put his hand on Thibaulaux's shoulder. The old man smiled warmly.  
  
"Why, tell me, Fray," he said. "To what end do we serve, here, if not to guide young souls to their purpose? Do go on."  
  
Fray slipped the blade of the _main-gauche_ between Thibaulaux's ribs. The old man buckled beneath the force of the blow. His legs tangled. He fell, with a howl of betrayal; Fray silenced him with the heel of a shoe against his windpipe. As the minutes passed, blood began to trickle from Thibalaux's flaring nostrils, and to well in his gaping mouth. He pulled at Fray's ankle with weak, sallow hands.

What a pitiful sight he was! The boy Fray might have prized mercy over vengeance, and put his faith in aught else than steel. The boy was dead. Now the priest's undignified choking and spluttering lifted Fray's heart. For the first time in moons, he laughed, while Thibalaux begged wordlessly to keep his foul, remorseless life. How right he was. "I've found my purpose," Fray said, and stood there in Thibalaux's clean, quiet chambers until he lay dead beneath his foot, a woad blue bruise blooming upon his throat.


	6. The Delta

Fray stirred. The air was warm, and fragrant with the scent of rosemary, old wood, and books. But a cold, slimy something touched his hand. He looked down to find a large frog in a colorful hat applying a poultice of flax to his swollen palm.  
  
His mouth fell open. The frog croaked in alarm. It patted the gauze it'd wrapped around the welt on his hand and backed away as if he were a deadly predator. "There you are," it said, in an ingratiating tone.  
  
A very old woman, bent over with age, leaned into his field of vision. She was clad as a mage, in robes of regal violet. "Awake, I see," she said. She had a distinct accent he'd heard only once at St. Reymanaud's, on the lips of a visiting Sharlayan master—not a conjurer, but an astrologian. She put her weight on the tall staff she carried in both hands and peered down further, into his eyes. "And in much improved mental condition. That dullardly look's all gone from your eyes."  
  
"I can't be dead," he reasoned. "The hells would make more sense than this."  
  
The woman hummed suspiciously, as if she were both certain he'd done something wrong and unable to prove it. "Open your hand, there," she commanded. He uncurled his fingers; in the palm was the soulstone.  
  
She leaned away, standing as straight as she could, and looked far across the room. Now that he had the space, he sat up. They were in some sort of cave—an inhabited one. There were bookshelves crammed full near to bursting along the walls. There was furniture. There were candles, and a cookfire that looked as if it had been in continuous use for a long time indeed. Dried herbs hung from the cieling, and magicked brooms swept clean the floors. The strange Highlander woman lay on a faded rug in a corner, unconscious, surrounded by the overgrown frogs. Gods help him, but he thought they looked almost worried.  
  
"What is it?" asked the old woman. She tapped the side of his hand with her cane. "That accursed thing."  
  
He told her the same thing he told everyone who happened to glimpse the soulstone: "Just a trinket. An heirloom given to me by my grandfather."  
  
"Both liars," she hissed, to herself. Then she stared at him again, and her gaze was fearsome. He had not felt fear at all in so long he was fairly startled into silence by it. "It's a soulstone, boy. That I can see. How long have you had it? And how long since its last master perished?"  
  
"Who are you?"  
  
"I am Matoya. I am older than you, and wiser, and I can see there's something foul in that thing, even if you lack the wits," said she. "But I doubt it has escaped your notice."  
  
Fray recovered just enough to say, "Would you care to tell me how I came to be here and what made you think you're entitled to interrogate me?"  
  
She laughed. The frog near his side hopped away. "Your sword's by the wall, Dark Knight, if holding it would make you feel _safer_."  
  
There was the old claymore, leaned against a barred door. With effort, he got to his feet. His face burned. He could barely walk straight, and the old hag—Matoya—knew it. Her eyes followed him, shining with mirth, as he walked a drunkard's walk to the blade. He slid the soulstone into the pocket of the tunic he wore—not his own—and took the sword in one hand. It looked considerably more ill-used than he'd left it, and he'd been known to go overlong without repairing his blade. It was probably what had killed him.  
  
He stopped. His bandaged hand reach for the artery on his neck. His pulse was strong, and elevated. He looked at the sleeping woman. Whoever she was, she'd not cared for herself in a while. Her hair was tangled and shaggy, her armor in poor repair. _Is it done so swiftly?_ she'd asked. Somehow, she'd drawn him back from the brink. What had it cost her?  
  
"You don't even know her, do you," said Matoya.  
  
But he did, somehow, in the way that he knew every Dark Knight who'd lived before him. "Her voice lives in the stone," he said.  
  
Matoya came to him. The hair that fell long across half her face, he saw, was not a sign of poor hygiene or the forgetfulness that comes with age; it hid a crimson legacy mark upon her face. "She struggled down your path," she said. "She brought her doubts to heel through battle, and in battle was ever the master. But when the blade was sheathed..."  
  
One of the frogs by her side croaked weakly, as if from sympathy. Matoya grunted and walked away.  
  
"Of course the Warrior of Light would sell her soul for a stranger," she muttered, losing interest in it all. "Elsewise it would not have been heroic enough."  
  
"Is she alive?"  
  
Matoya settled at the nearby table and opened a book as wide as his torso. "The Echo asks much of those fortunate enough to claim its blessing," she said. "She'll be up again in a bell or two, in search of more mistakes to make."  
  
The claymore was too heavy to carry in one hand. He tried to retrieve it with both and the rough wrapping round the hilt drew a shock of pain from the wound. The blade fell from his grasp. Gods damnit! Why was he so weak? His thighs ached, as if after a long journey on 'bo-back. His limbs shook with the anxious energy of battle. He might've been struck down just moments ago. He felt himself an untried child again, with hands fit only for conjury. Nay, worse—even before he'd trained his arms to hold that blade, he'd been able, at least, to lift a suit of armor. Now it would've crushed him. And this bloody chorus of sapient frogs would've been witness to it! He picked up the sword from the ground with his good hand and with effort pushed the pommel upward with the wrist of his other hand; then he leaned it against the wall and left it there.  
  
He crossed the room with the haste of the greatly embarrassed. As he shouldered the door open, Matoya said, "I'd caution you not to stray too far, but anyone with some sense of self-preservation would've chosen a different profession."  
  
The door snapped itself shut behind him, and a glamour rippled across its boards until it was no more than a mossy cave wall. Blessed silence, and solitude. He had to clear his head. But beyond the Twelve had staged an improbable scene that made him think perhaps he was dead after all. A web of clear and lovely springs stretched beyond the edges of his view, each mirroring the violet of the sunset sky. Around them the land rose stark and precipitous toward the heavens. Spires of stone struck at the horizon like talons. And everywhere there were blankets of green—verdant, delirious green, crawling upon every horizontal surface.  
  
Past these, a monolith rose toward the sliver of a moon, crowned with a faint halo of turquoise light. He screwed shut his eyes and took his face in his hands. By force of habit his fingers searched for the scar across his nose, only to find the skin smooth and unblemished. Whose body was this? His hair was long and unkempt, his jaw unshaven. When last he'd looked this poorly, he'd been bereft, murderous in his lust for vengeance, begging to be inducted as a dark knight.  
  
The soulstone. He knew not where he was, or who he was with. "Warrior of Light" and "Echo"—these words meant nothing to him. His clothes and body were someone else's, surely. The soulstone was the only thing of his he had that he could yet carry. He took it in his hand. But its aura was unfamiliar—heavy, too, in its way. A scattering of pale flickering stars had appeared in the sky. He sat at the edge of Matoya's tangled garden and listened.  
  
The clamor of ancient voices moored him. These he knew. He let them wash over him until the sky was stained with night's deep blue. Then he heard a voice he knew especially well.

It was his own. It asked, "Who are you?"  
  
He flung the stone away, into the weeds.  
  
The door creaked open behind him. "Sorry to have left you," said a voice. The woman. Warmth and fellowship in her eyes, and the claymore carried with ease in her arms.  
  
"I want no part of this," he said.  
  
"It's alright," she assured him, and his eye twitched. _Alright?_   Was she _mad?_   "Rest."  
  
"Where have you taken me?"  
  
"An old Sharlayan colony in the Dravanian Hinterlands," she said. She told him her name. "Before, we stood above the Aetherial Sea. I drew you back through the waves."  
  
"Bollocks! This—" he stammered, and pulled at the long vest over his tunic. "This is not me. Whose corpse have you shoved me into?"  
  
She furrowed her brow, but made no further show of frustration. She slung the claymore across her back and bent into the brush to retrieve the soulstone, as if she'd somehow seen where he'd thrown it. The difference between this woman—steady as stone, and as cool of temper—and the tearful Fury he had seen hours before was too great. Formless, unsettled notions crowded his mind. She walked past him and whistled loudly through her fingers; the sound filled all the world. A titanic red draught chocobo fluttered down from the cliff that hung over the cave. She smoothed the feathers upon its face; it cooed affectionately in response. "I want to take you back to Sidurgu and the girl," she said. "Will you let me?"  
  
His anger cooled. Relief struck him with real force such that he almost staggered. He had to see their faces. How could he refuse?


	7. The Widower and the Wildling

It was August, and for eight days snow fell upon Falcon's Nest, unabating. On the ninth day sunlight poured from between towering clouds onto the blank blinding plains that one could glimpse, now and again, from the alleyways of Falcon's Nest. Sidurgu did not run, though their pursuers had not ceased to do so since they'd first caught sight of them at the Arc of the Worthy. His long stride served as well as a Hyur's jog, and to run would give away his position in the labyrinth.  
  
He looked over his shoulder to ensure Rielle yet followed him. To a stranger, her clear, pale eyes would've seemed focused wholly on the way before them, but he knew they were turned inward. He could ill imagine the memories they looked upon. Her blonde fringe, as fine as corn silk, flashed in the sun. He led her to a narrower pathway still, and they were enfolded in the deep, still cold that lived in the morning shadows.  
  
A hard winter awaited them. The Archbishop Thordan VII had perished in a terrible battle. Perilous truth washed over Ishgard in his absence. What good men remained in Her church fell to despair; in this hour, madmen reigned, clinging to the benighted past, lashing out at those who sought for themselves a better future. Amidst this chaos a brutal priest had a free hand, and the Countess de Caulignont hastened to seize her opportunity.  
  
Her hounds had followed them to Falcon's Nest. He would fight; a Dark Knight was no stranger to pursuit. But Fury take it, there were so many of the bastards!  
  
"Sid," Rielle whispered. "Sid." From the timbre of her voice, she'd been trying to get his attention for a while. He could hardly hear her over the racket of his own armor and the shouts of the Temple Knights on their trail.  
  
"What?"  
  
"There must be thirty of them," she said, eyes wide.  
  
"I know."  
  
"They're all around," she said. "In front of us, too."  
  
"Then I'll cut those down, and we'll carry on," he said.  
  
She bit her lip. Took his hand in her own. Quickened her pace.  
  
There was a tremendous racket nearby. He couldn't see it, but he knew it was a fight. They stopped at the corner where the alleys met, listening. Rielle mouthed the words, "Is someone helping us?"  
  
He dared not dream it, for he was alone. The last of his kind. There had been precious hours in which he'd supposed he might have found a friend in the Highlander woman. She'd felled Nidhogg—could she not master herself? Was her love of House Fortemps' shield so great that she couldn't put it down, and do what was right? When he offered her the choice, she'd turned, saying nothing, and left, and that was all. He would search for allies no longer. But ahead he could hear armour crashing against the ground. One knight, breathing his last, croaked, "There's more of them!"  
  
The twin hearts pounded in his chest. For just a moment, Sidurgu held within him yet the memory of green. Not the green of the Shroud, black and tangled, but a rolling, mossy Coerthan green, the green of her last summer before the Fall. A Miqo'te, of all things, emerged from the alleyway. There were so few of them in Ishgard proper that to see one was still a shock. His skin was a dull light gray, his hair blue-violet, like a faded banner. But his eyes burned, and burned.  
  
"So you're the one with all the friends," he said, and even Sid felt that he was dangerous.  
  
"I've no time to talk."  
  
"No need. Go along that way," said the Miqo'te, indicating the trail of carnage he'd left in his wake. "I'll have a chat with them, instead."  
  
Rielle ran ahead, wending her way around the bodies. Sidurgu followed. As they passed the motionless Temple Knights where they lay on the ground, Sid saw how they'd been killed—with blunt force. It was a bloodless slaughter, but for the little stripes of red that trickled from their noses, mouths, and ears. Their breastplates were dented, helmets warped. They had been broken.  
  
When they were just out of sight, the Miqo'te crowed, "I killed the Archbishop! I took your King! Face me, if you dare!"

The Temple Knights broke into an unholy riot of obscenities. Challenges. Sid took a last glance at the dead men on the ground and knew— whether his boasts were true or not, every one of them would die. He only halfway managed to surpress a horrible laugh. Rielle frowned in token disapproval, but there was relief hidden in her eyes.

Far at the foot of the village, with the sounds of struggle gone dead behind them, Sid at last sought shelter. He ducked into the back door of a tavern.

"Go to the kitchen," he said. "Find Odile. Stay with her." Rielle nodded, and vanished into a side room like a Sylph into the wood.

The people here knew them. He might've almost called it home. It was the Bisy Lark, and it was a rare place of asylum in the See's domain. Its proprietress was a wiry old dame of seventy-eight with a waterfall of wavy white hair, formerly a Knight Dragoon, whose convenient disgrace had cleared a son of House Dzemael of accusations both ruinous and numerous. Her name was Lucrece, and she'd found great joy in harboring foes of the highborn ever since. Within the Lark, such rabble might find friendship and safety—and it was a veritable library if one wished to hear fresh tales of wrongs that wanted righting.

He stood in the cold hallway and waited. He would not bring down the wrath of his enemies upon the Lark. If the Miqo'te had missed a few Knights— if they'd been followed by someone more careful than the Countess' typical attack dogs— he wanted to meet them here, to stop them getting in. But a bell passed, and no one tried the door. There was no more shouting, no more steel. Nothing but the muffled sounds of the tavern patrons having breakfast, talking over morning tea.

One of the kitchen maids walked out in front of him carrying a sack of flour. She was Wildwood, but still had to crane her neck to see his face. "You can't be back here—" she began, then recognized the horns, the white flesh, the scowl. "Oh." She scurried away without further comment. He took the hall toward the front of the place and tucked himself into his customary corner.

He'd hardly had time to breathe before Lucrece appeared. She leaned on the battered chair opposite him, one hand draped cheekily over her hip.  


Lucrece's girls knew better than to trouble him. Lucrece did not know better. She never respected a sulk, even when he'd been no more to her than a prickly orphaned monster her most venerable regular had taken as his own. Then he had drawn frightened glances even from Isghard's most despised, as if he were a pet morbol on a too-long leash. But Lucrece had, from the start, wandered to his table in the corner as if he were her kin—just another Elezen boy, grown taller and surlier than expected. There was no turning her away.

"When I was a girl, and it snowed for a week just once," said she, raising a knotted finger, "the Church told us all that the Twelve were a-mourning our wickedness, and that Althyk bade Halone bury the world in ice so that They might forget our shame."  


"Which one's Althyk, again?" He was as devoted to the Fury as any other man of Ishgard, but he was fuzzy on the rest.

"The Keeper, my boy. The Lord of Time," she said. "Have you not learned them, by now? Who guards the Au Ra, if not the Twelve?"  


"The Au Ra," he said, and she rolled her eyes. One of the girls strode by with the tea service in one arm, taking care to avoid eye contact with him, and Lucrece plucked a cup from her tray and set it down before him. She clucked her tongue. The girl stopped and offered the tray to Lucrece, who made up the tea for him without asking if he wanted it. She added naught but a dash of cream, which swirled in the tea like a high winter cloud. The strain of flight suddenly alit upon his shoulders. The Countess had come for them at sundown, hoping to catch them as they settled in to rest; he'd not slept since the night before. He watched the steam drift away from the lovely brown liquid and felt his shoulders sag.

Lucrece, however, was an old woman, and old women were at the peak of their power in these early bells. She said, "You've need of a smith to temper that tongue. Where's that pretty friend of yours?"  


He furrowed his brow. The tea passed his lips and he felt he might live to see a few more suns after all. "In the kitchen with Odile, I hope," he said. The two girls were becoming fast friends, and Rielle did not make friends easy. She'd even learned a bit of cooking, to help her while she worked.

"Not Rielle, you great scaly oaf," Lucrece said. "The black boy, with the golden eyes."

_Fray_ , he thought, and the name was a balm with a bitter scent. How small he had looked, with the feathered cypress needles new against his shoulders. The cookfire redolent of pine. On his first night with his new companions in bitter exile, Fray complained not at all. He ate the dismal gruel that marked the limits of the old Master's culinary ability with eagerness and gratitude. But every night thereafter, he took on the burden of the galleykeep himself. Simple fare though it was, each meal Fray presented them was new to him in some way. All were finer than he felt he deserved, and served without pretense; Fray never so much as gave their names unless he was asked.

In time, Sid did begin to ask. The answers revealed constellations of experience entirely unknown to him. How strange it had been, to be shown new senses by a Hyur! Their own were gods-awful—as dull as lead—and their reactions to pheromones entirely subconscious. Not a one could tell fugilin from black, nor name prismatic octarine though it flash before their eyes. Yet while they lingered in the city, Fray would slink to the Crozier and its markets at night and return with pungent roots and bottles of ground pepper and Highland oregano just to show him what might be done with them.  


It was the first time in his life that Sid had sensed there were colours in Hydaelyn he not only did not see, but whose existence he had never suspected. And here, a little Hyuran man with an angry scab across his nose, swapping out saucepans for pots in the middle of cooking like a bloody thaumaturge manipulating aether currents. But he called it "braising".  


"I liked him," Lucrece said, and folded her arms across her narrow chest. "You spoke freer, then."  


"He's gone," he said. "And you'll be rid of us, too, by this evening."

"You're leaving Ishgard? After all this time?" She looked betrayed. "Where are you going?"

"Dravania," he said. He had only just made the decision himself, but he knew she would be horrified to hear it. She had struck a well of melancholy in him, and vengeance was his only comfort. He could recall so clearly Fray's deft and well-kept hands mincing chives against a clean, cold stone while the wilderness loomed all around them. The succulent, flaky flesh of catfish steamed in anise and maple. The hidden colours, lost to him for ever. With a pitiless savour, he said, "If you're lucky, we won't come back."  


She leaned over the table and glared a grandmother's searing glare. In an urgent whisper, she said, "Dravania! For what, boy? To wreak vengeance in the name of oppressed dragons and chocobo hunters? Gibrillont will flay me with a bread knife if aught befalls you. Flay me."

He laughed. "How do you plan to protect me? By being nosy?" For their options dwindled. Serendipity had rescued them today, but who could say what the morrow might bring? If Rielle were kin to dragons, perhaps they would protect her. If Ishgard thought him a heretic, well, it suit him to become one.  


Lucrece withdrew, her jaw set, shaking her head. "Diligence, Sidurgu. Love. There's a warm bed for each of you here. Out there, there's only snow, and snares—"

The bell upon the front door sang. It had done so many times since he'd arrived; this time he looked up. It was the Miqo'te.

"What are you staring at?"

"Person," he said.

"You bloody faucet," she hissed, and tried to block his line of sight. "You've got that look on your face like you're about to fight someone."

"No I haven't."

"Is he foul? Shall I have him removed?"

"I'll look into it for you," he said, and waved the man over. Lucrece swept away with a wary look in her eye, but when she turned to greet the Miqo'te she gave him the same smile she gave everyone, that of a spry old tavern wench who'd feed anyone in the world, so long as his blood ran red. The stanger smiled back, then fell into the chair opposite Sid's.

He was a stereotype of an adventurer—dirty, scarred, all muscle, and dressed for warmer climes. The Temple Knights had gotten a few nicks on him, here and there. They were already healing. "Akhon, since you asked so nicely," he said.

"What?"

"Akhon," he said. He spoke the common tongue, but the way he said his name was slightly foreign. Sid repeated it, badly, and Akhon said, "Close enough."

"I wish you hadn't followed me here," Sid said.

"Nobody's going to know," Akhon said. One of the girls offered him tea, and he raised his hand in refusal without looking at her. "The snow'll thaw and freeze over again in the next two bells. What trail there was'll be gone. Just a bunch of cold meat, lying in the road."

"Under whose aegis did you enter the See?" Sid asked.

"Eh?"

"They don't let you lot in unless you've got noble sponsors. Who's yours?"

"Ohh," Akhon said, and ran a hand through his hair. "I can't get into _Ishgard_. Not yet. Can you believe it? After all I've done for them."

Then he meant to stick by it. Sid had heard about the Archbishop—how he'd summoned a primal, that it'd swallowed him, that he was dead by a hero's hand. But Akhon didn't seem the type, and his vanity meant nothing to Sidurgu. He asked, "What do you want?"

Akhon grinned, as if he'd been waiting all his life for someone to ask. His eyes shone with a greed that was both powerful and forthright. "I love a fight with uneven odds. Not so much when they're in my favor," he said. He clenched his fists with bloodthirsty joy. "I need a titanic foe. Towering. A legend. Not a dead one, like King Thordan. A live one. And I think you know her."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can thank Hurricane Michael for the delay. It's going to be a long time before things are back to normal here.


End file.
